


I Don't Know (If I'll Be Back This Time)

by CatKing_Catkin



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Battle, Caleb Widogast Deserves Nice Things, Caleb Widogast Needs a Hug, Developing Relationship, Dungeons & Dragons Spell Mechanics, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fix-It of Sorts, Flashbacks, Ghost Mollymauk Tealeaf, Happy Ending, Headcanon, Hugs, Hurt Caleb Widogast, Kissing, M/M, Mollymauk Tealeaf Has Feelings, Mollymauk Tealeaf Lives, Mollymauk Tealeaf's Backstory, Protective Mollymauk Tealeaf, Research, Secret Relationship, Speculation, starts off sad but gets happier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-19 14:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22279198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: Caleb is well familiar with the basic tenants of Dunamancy, the principles behind the scant few spells he knows. He knows how the Resonant Echo spell is supposed to work - its supposed to make a copy of him, a shadow from another time, one that can cast a spell on his behalf and then vanish when its work is done.It's definitely not supposed to make an echo of Mollymauk Tealeaf instead. But in the heat of battle, due to nothing more than a fluke of chance, Caleb's spell does just that for the briefest instant.He sets out to make sure he can make it happen again. He works in the hope of one day making it happen permanently. Essek eventually works to help him make it happen. Perhaps surprisingly, so does Molly.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss & Caleb Widogast, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast, Mollymauk Telaeaf & Essek Thelyss
Comments: 12
Kudos: 225





	I Don't Know (If I'll Be Back This Time)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elany](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elany/gifts).



> Listen. There's a lot going on in this fic. A lot of plot in a comparatively short amount of words. Keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times and I hope this is an enjoyable ride. 
> 
> Written for the Widomauk Winter Gift Exchange. I hope you like it, Elany!

When one was acquainted with the Mighty Nein, one simply had to accept the fact that they could and would barrel into one’s life at a moment’s notice and without warning.

Essek Thelyss had made peace with this some time ago. At least it kept things interesting in a way that didn’t usually threaten his life and limb, the way so much of his other work did.

And at least some of them knew how to _knock_.

The very fact that one of his staff came to him to let him know that one of the Mighty Nein had knocked at the door gave Essek a reasonably good idea of which one it was likely to be. Sure enough, Caleb Widogast was escorted into his office mere moments later. Essek raised an eyebrow in curiosity at the sight of the human and smiled in welcome all the same. A glance was enough to tell him a great deal - bags beneath the eyes, hair tousled and half-untied, clothes unkempt and bearing dried bloodstains that hadn’t been there the last time Essek had seen him. His clerics had taken decent care of him on whatever expedition he was just returning from, but the signs were there that Caleb had been riding hell bent for leather. 

And yet, none of that did anything to diminish the bright gleam in Caleb’s eye. There was something manic about it, a burning glow of obsession that Essek was all too familiar with. Whatever Caleb and the Mighty Nein had recently been doing, it had led to him discovering something very interesting. Knowing Caleb, that probably meant it was something very interesting of an arcane nature. Essek could only hope that the human was here to share. 

“Caleb,” he said, inclining his head in welcome and gesturing to one of the chairs across from his desk. “Please, sit.” 

Caleb did so, slumping down heavily in a chair and letting out a long, exhausted sigh he probably didn’t even know he’d been holding in. Essek gave him a moment to pull himself together, using the time to make a murmured request to the agent to secure them some tea. He was normally more than capable of fetching his own drinks, but something about the sight of Caleb made him reluctant to take his eyes off the human in that moment, and the other drow went to do him the favor easily enough. 

Essek drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the desktop for a moment, until it became clear that Caleb wasn’t going to say anything first and it would be up to him to take the plunge. “So,” he said, forcing brightness into his tone and a smile onto his face. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

Finally, the sound of his voice seemed to draw Caleb properly back to the world. He startled slightly, then lifted his head to stare at Essek, blinking blearily. Another second, and he pulled himself together enough to speak. 

“I am, ah, I am sorry for barging in,” he said. His voice was low and faint, ringing with tiredness. 

“If I thought you were barging, I wouldn’t have let you in.”

The assurance, slight as it was, seemed to relax Caleb a little further, enough that he continued. “It, it’s just that this…this incident, that I wish to discuss, I think you are the _only_ one I can discuss it with, and the wait until we could return and speak properly has been—” He pressed a hand to his mouth in a vain attempt to muffle his weak, exhausted chuckles. Essek ruthlessly tamped down the curl of concern winding tighter in his gut. “—interminable.”

“Go on.”

Caleb nodded, started to reach for one pocket with a shaking hand, then frowned and darted a glance back at Essek’s face. “I am going to cast the echo spell you showed me. Is that all right?”

Essek nodded and waved a hand for him to continue. Privately, he’d long since stopped worrying that the Mighty Nein had any designs on his life or even designs against the Dynasty. But there was no harm in encouraging good manners all the same. 

Caleb needed no further encouragement. He drew forth the little piece of obsidian, held it in the palm of one hand, and used the other to start carving the requisite arcane runes through the air. He closed his eyes and muttered the incantation and Essek realized with a jolt of shock and confusion that he could see tears gathering in the corners of Caleb’s eyes.

Before he could even begin to wonder why, whether they were a sign of stress or pain or something else, the obsidian flashed a deeper shade of black and the echo appeared.

And Essek saw immediately what was wrong. 

The principles of the spell colloquially known as Resonant Echo were easy enough to grasp for anyone who had learned the fundamentals of Dunamancy. The existence of alternate timelines was well documented, even if the full scope of them was likely impossible to truly grasp. This spell was a way to bridge the gap between possibilities, allowing a different iteration of the caster to cross over. 

However, it was only the fundamental _sameness_ connecting different iterations of the same person, the way the soul remained constant even if the body and mind were changed by different experiences, which allowed that bridge to be formed. The spell should only ever create an echo of the caster. 

Which made it somewhat unexpected, to say the least, for Essek to suddenly find himself confronted with a shade in the shape of a tiefling. 

Essek opened his mouth, and then closed it again. Several different questions and possibilities raced through his head all at once, tangling themselves together and rendering him briefly speechless. 

Echos were not mindless, else they would have been incapable of magic and useless as temporary backup in a fight. But Essek still felt a jolt of added shock when the shade looked down at Caleb and laid a hand on his shoulder and _smiled_.

Then Essek saw the way Caleb smiled back at the tiefling, and suddenly everything was clearer. 

“Do you know this tiefling?” he asked quietly.

Caleb squeezed the echo’s hand and nodded without looking at him.

Essek made his voice as gentle as he could. “ _Did_ you know this tiefling?”

He heard Caleb’s breath catch, saw his fingers twitch. Caleb Widogast was a smart man, after all. He knew what Essek _really_ meant by the question.

And he did Essek the courtesy of not trying to lie. He simply nodded once more.

Essek exhaled a long, resigned sigh. Of course, the day had suddenly gotten complicated. Such seemed to be the way of things, whenever the Mighty Nein came barelling back into his life.

The agent chose that moment to demonstrate his impeccable timing and return with the tea. Essek accepted the pot and cups with a murmur of thanks and poured out two, pretending not to listen as Caleb spoke a few murmured words to the tiefling. 

Then he set Caleb’s cup on Caleb’s side of the desk, stared fixedly until Caleb took the hint and drank some, and finally cleared his throat to launch into his explanation - all the while stubbornly trying to ignore the heat of the echo’s searching stare. 

“This particular, ah, call it a glitch. It isn’t unheard of, no.” Bright boy that he was, Caleb immediately and obviously found a way to pay even closer attention. “It is most common when first learning the spell, as your senses are still growing accustomed to instinctively seeking out the right timelines and the right moments in those timelines to call upon.”

It also became more common the later a mage or an echo knight got into their lives and careers, but there was no point digging into that and confusing the matter further. Caleb had not known dunamancy anywhere near long enough for that to enter into it.

Essek bit back a sigh. He could feel himself growing restless, agitated, and gave into the impulse. He drifted up from his seat and floated over to the front of the desk, the better to pace back and forth in front of Caleb and help keep his own mind turning. 

“When you cast this spell, you are seeking out other timelines where you exist in the same moment and exist in a state that might be helpful in a fight - and then you are taking a copy of that version of yourself and transposing it, _temporarily_ , into your current time. What can happen sometimes, however, is that you latch onto a timeline where you have already perished. But, the presence of loved ones, who might be thinking strongly of you in that moment, can…confuse the signal, shall we say.” 

“Because this version of Mollymauk was thinking strongly of me in the moment I cast the spell, it confused the magic, and made an echo of him instead because there was no other ‘source’ of me left in that time?”

Essek nodded. “More or less.” 

Caleb didn’t seem to know what to say that. He let out another shuddering sigh, resting his face in one hand. The echo - Essek would not think of it as “Mollymauk”, for his own sake and Caleb’s - knelt down beside Caleb, reached out to rub his arm and run a fretful hand through his hair. Essek ceased his pacing to watch the silent, tender exchange with a knot of something sympathetic and sharp in his heart.

“This is supposed to be an exceedingly rare _glitch_ ,” he heard himself say firmly. The echo heard him and glared up at him. Essek continued to steadfastly ignore it. “But judging by your demeanor when you arrived, and the fact that you came to me in the first place, I suspect that you have already put work into making it happen reliably. Am I on the right track, Caleb?”

Caleb nodded without lifting his head.

“Don’t,” said Essek. Caleb flinched, and the echo’s glower only deepened. Essek took a breath and tried once more to gentle his voice, no matter how much of an effort of will it took, no matter how tense and wary and _worried_ he felt. “If you keep putting a broken bone through the very same trauma that broke it in the first place, it will never heal properly, isn’t that so?”

Caleb made a sound that might have been a laugh or a quiet sob. When the echo drew him into a hug, he went willingly, collapsing against its chest. Essek deliberately looked away, and finally drifted back behind his desk to retake his seat. 

To the hells with it.

“You seem an intelligent tiefling,” he said, pitching his voice to make it clear he _was_ addressing the echo. “You seem to know what you are.” 

The tiefling in question glared at him over the top of Caleb’s head. Essek raised an eyebrow. “I think you know that this _arrangement_ can hardly be called a proper existence. For either of you.” He half-raised a hand. “I’m sure you both think yourselves terribly clever. Summoning an echo incapable of magic, so that the condition to end the spell never triggers? As if that makes this _permanent_? As if Caleb isn’t constantly having to expend energy to maintain your presence in this time? As if you won’t _shatter_ the first time you take an arrow from an attacker? Were you the sort of person to leap at the chance of making him watch you die a second time?”

“Fourth,” Caleb whispered.

And that was such an impossibly heartbreaking thought that Essek couldn’t bring himself to continue. He closed his mouth hard enough to feel his teeth click together, clenching his fists in his lap, torn between the need to scream in frustration and the wild impulse to go and join the echo in hugging Caleb consolingly. 

He wasn’t a monster, or at least hoped he wasn’t. He felt like one, in that moment. The fact that every word he was saying was true didn’t change a thing of that. 

“You came to me to hear what I would say about this…situation,” he finally said, very quietly, when it became clear that Caleb was out of words. “That is what I have to say. I can’t make your decisions for you, Caleb. I only hope that you—” Saying what he did next made him faintly taste bile, but he made himself say it. “—that _both of you_ will understand that I am speaking from some experience. And not just an experience of years.”

The admission and even the _implication_ of vulnerability that came along with it was a nearly physical pain. But it seemed to do the trick. Caleb finally lifted his head to stare at him with exhausted, teary eyes. The echo’s glower softened into something a little more understanding. It and Caleb exchanged a long look, a slight nod - and then it was helping Caleb to his feet, and Caleb was allowing the assistance. 

“Thank you, Essek,” Caleb said, bowing his head to him briefly. Essek inclined his head in turn. “I, ah, I appreciate your time, and I will—I will—” He seemed at a loss, flapping his hands helplessly before folding them tightly across his chest. The echo watched him quietly, rubbing his back in big, slow circles. Caleb finally settled on: “I will think about this,” in a barely audible whisper.

“Please do,” Essek answered, just as softly. “If there is any further assistance I can provide in getting you back on the right track, you need only ask.” 

Caleb nodded. The echo - Mollymauk - nodded.

Then they left, side by side, leaving one largely-untouched cup of tea on the table.

Essek stared at the door for a good long while after it closed behind them. Then he slowly rested his head in his hands, massaged his temples against the threat of an oncoming headache, and tried ruthlessly to tamp down the sympathetic pang in his heart.

* * *

The walk back to the house was quiet.

Then again, that was nothing new. 

But Caleb fancied that a different sort of pensiveness hung between them now, something that went above and beyond Molly’s newfound inability to speak. He stayed close, however - one arm threaded through Caleb’s, his head resting carefully on Caleb’s shoulder, and Caleb was glad of that. He kept one arm flung around Molly’s shoulder and used it to help ground him against the threat of too many bad possibilities that seemed now to be looming in his future.

Caleb was determined to stare them all down.

Caleb was determined to not blink. 

“Essek is, ah,” he said, finally breaking the quiet as the giant tree became visible over the rooftops. “He is a good man. I am, um, I am fond of him, I think. I hope you get the chance to become fond of him, too. I think he meant well, saying what he said.” He glanced at Molly to see if he agreed. Molly lifted his head, returned his glance sidelong, and nodded cautiously. Faintly emboldened, Caleb continued. “I think he is simply trying to spare us more pain. But that has never truly been our way, has it?”

This time, Molly grinned faintly as he nodded once again. 

Caleb slowed to a stop - what he had to say next was too important. He glanced around and drew Molly into an alleyway between two other houses. Molly went willingly, and melted easily into the kiss Caleb pressed against his mouth as soon as they were out of an easy line of sight. 

His lips were warm. His form was that of ink and shadow but he was solid in Caleb’s arms and his lips were warm.

Foolish as it was, it was that more than anything that had convinced Caleb to go down this road as early as the second time he’d been able to make this happen. 

When he pulled away, he didn’t go far, only enough to rest his brow against Molly’s instead. He reached down with shaking hands and sighed softly at the feel of Molly lacing their fingers together and holding tight.

“And as hard as that was to hear,” he murmured. “It was useful too, hm? We learned some things. We learned that this _can_ be made permanent.” 

Truthfully, Essek had flattered him in assuming that he was there already. It was true that the drain on his concentration was constant, but - where he was now - it was also too much to maintain forever. Eventually, he started to flag. Eventually, the connection wavered, and Molly…

_There was too much happening too fast and he wasn’t in any fit state to be standing up. The fact that he’d even managed to drag himself behind a rock and take some kind of cover was a minor miracle. Caleb clamped one hand down hard on his bleeding side and used the other to carve arcane glyphs through the air, piece of obsidian resting in his lap. If he couldn’t risk being out there himself, at least he could still find a way to keep an eye on the situation, cast a spell to hopefully help turn the tides against the three rampaging trolls._

_The spell completed. The air off to his left flashed. Caleb looked over, only to see…not himself, not a shadow of himself appearing, spell at the ready. The echo that appeared instead charged immediately forward, unbidden, swords drawn and ready. It raced towards the troll fearlessly and, with two quick cuts, hamstrung it so that it tipped forward into the muck and Yasha was able to behead it with a single stroke of her sword._

_And that didn’t end things, not by a long shot, but it would ultimately help turn the tides and it certainly gave them a much needed handful of seconds to breathe. It gave them long enough to look and see who was once again impossibly standing in their midsts. It was long enough for Caleb to gape openly from where he was still huddled in cover._

_It was Yasha who spoke first. It always would have been. “Molly?” she whispered, and the echo of Mollymauk Tealeaf actually_ grinned _back at her, proud as a peacock._

_It was the sight of that smile that did it. Caleb would curse himself for letting shock and grief and joy and longing all come together like that to disrupt his concentration._

_But in blink, just as suddenly as he’d appeared, Molly was gone._

_And when Yasha turned her rage on the other two trolls, Caleb saw that there were tears on her cheeks._

It was why he’d kept his efforts a secret, after the first time. The grief on his friend’s faces, to have seen Molly appear - alive in some sense once more - and then watch him vanish again, all because Caleb hadn’t been strong enough, had been too much to bear. He’d offered Molly a pen and paper in secret to make sure he agreed, and Molly did. Doing so had given the added benefit of reassuring him that this was the same echo each time, because Molly had remembered the first time as well. 

And the second time he’d made this happen, in secret, on watch, Caleb still hadn’t been entirely sure he could to it reliably. So he’d given in to the urge he’d tamped down on for far too long, and kissed Molly for all he was worth, right there in the dome, surrounded by the dark and amongst their sleeping friends. 

It had strengthened his resolve, even if it hadn’t done much to strengthen his magic _yet_. 

But he would get there. 

“And I will keep trying until I can make this permanent,” he promised softly. “I will keep trying until you can stay. No matter how many arrows get shot at you. If, if I am already charting new courses in magic for Nott’s sake, you deserve the same. If we are already halfway down this road, I can keep going. I don’t know how long it will take.” And that thought set off a fresh buzz of anxiety in the back of his mind. Transmutation was something he’d spent most of his life so far getting a handle on. Dunamancy was still so _new_. “But I will keep working. It _will_ be done, Mollymauk. I swear it.” 

He brought one of their joined hands to his mouth to kiss, sealing the vow. _“Ich_ _liebe_ _dich_.” He’d wasted one chance to say those words. He would not waste this second one. 

The smile that lit up Molly’s face - so dazzling and still somehow so vibrant despite his newfound state - made the risk and the promise more than worth it. When he leaned forward to kiss Caleb again, Caleb went happily. 

He would have to drop the spell before they got much closer to the house. But he would cast it again later. He would see Molly again later. And he would keep working until he’d never have to cast the spell again. 

And until that day came, moments like this could keep him warm and maybe, hopefully, help keep Molly close. 

* * *

It was two nights later when Essek returned home to find an intruder waiting for him in his study. 

He gasped in alarm, immediately raising a hand to cast - and then his wits caught up with him at the last minute, halfway through the incantation. He realized what he was seeing, and curiosity just barely outweighed his shock enough to make him lower his hand and tilt his head in thoughtful curiosity. “--hello.”

The echo of Mollymauk Tealeaf smiled brightly, offered a jaunty salute, and held out a piece of paper. 

And at that point, what could Essek do but take it and pour over the chicken-scratch handwriting upon it? 

_caleb is asleep. turns out learning to keep a spell going in your sleep is a good thing for wizards. he wanted to practice it. i said yes. i don’t know how long I have._

_hi! : ) my name used to be nonagon. that one might be more familiar to you._

_the thing about being what I am - and knowing it, yes, thank you - is that it’s kind of hard to not remember things._

_i think you can help me. please help me. for_ _caleb_ _’s sake if not mine._

Essek stared from the note to the patiently waiting echo and back again, but the words stubbornly refused to change. The _situation,_ bizarre and impossible as it was, stubbornly refused to change. 

And really, at this point, what could he honestly do but go along with it and see what happened? Caleb clearly couldn’t be trusted to manage this situation all on his own, after all. 

So he went and fetched some paper and an ink pen, motioned for the ghost to sit down, set the writing implements down before him, and settled in to try and better his own understanding of this increasingly impossible situation. 

They turned out to not have long. Essek looked up from his tea at one point about an hour and a half in to the silent conversation to find himself suddenly alone in the room. He stared fixedly at the spot where Molly had been, then down at their combined and patchwork notes, then carefully sorted and stacked them for later review. 

Things looked to have gotten a little more interesting.

There was still technically a war going on, so it wasn’t as if he didn’t have plenty of matters to occupy his attention. But Essek made time at one point to stop by the Marble Tomes Conservatory and get himself some time in their hall of records. 

It didn’t take him as long as he’d feared, thankfully. The name he spoke to the two assistants on duty was as familiar to them as it was to him, even if - like him - they clearly couldn’t quite place where. But between the three of them, they managed to find the records in question, and the other documents and writings that those records unexpectedly pointed to.

“Well, well,” Essek murmured, running his fingers first over the name of the author of the dunamantic treatise in his hands, and then over the arcane glyphs and formulae contained within it.“How did you get so far from home?”

He knew the name had seemed familiar when he’d read it at first. Most practitioners of this branch of magic would have felt the same. Most of them read this particular work when just starting out - brilliant but incomplete, cut tragically short by an early death, an inspiration to them all as to the potential that dunamancy held as well as a reminder to be grateful to the Luxon’s blessings. 

And yet, there was no record of the drow known as Nonagon ever having been formally consecuted. He might have been, one day. But it had been his first life, and there ultimately hadn’t been time. 

Maybe he’d found a way to arrange things so that hadn’t mattered. Or maybe Caleb had accidentally done so. 

Either way, Essek found himself mentally reevaluating his understanding of Caleb and Molly’s strange, impossible situation. It couldn’t hurt to help see it through, perhaps.. The chance to speak to a learned predecessor was always a wonderful opportunity. The possibility of helping to finish the work he held in his hands was too tempting to turn his back on cavalierly. 

And if, in doing so, he happened to somehow help a figure of their past and a hope for their future do the impossible, well, stranger things had happened. 

* * *

Caleb kept practicing. Eventually, he was able to maintain the spell for hours on end without any sign of strain - probably could have maintained it longer, in fact, if not for the difficulties that would have presented in hiding Molly’s existence from the rest of the Mighty Nein. When he slept, Molly was free to wander, sometimes working with Essek and sometimes pacing the house and sometimes simply enjoying the sights of the city of Rohsona, his one-time home. He was less obvious here than he’d ever been and, even if he still got _some_ stares, it wasn’t as if anyone would connect him to anyone in the Mighty Nein or think him inherently more suspicious than anyone else. 

Or at least, that was the hope. He still couldn’t _actually_ talk, which was annoying. Maybe, between Caleb and Essek, they could find a way around that at some point, too.

It was a strange existence, all things considered, scattered and disjointed and secret. But it _was_ an existence, better than nothing. “Nothing” was precisely what he’d come from and, apparently, what he’d come _to_ in this reality. 

It was a strange and weighty and not remotely comfortable topic to grapple with. In the halfway place between realities that he now seemed to occupy whenever Caleb couldn’t maintain the connection any longer, Molly nevertheless found himself with no choice but to grapple with it. Time and time again he drifted, surrounded by the ebb and flow of all his memories from multiple lifetimes in multiple skins. 

The person he was now, the person he stubbornly refused to _stop_ being no matter what he remembered, shied away from it all - it was too big, too much, too dark and impossible. But he made himself grapple with it anyway - for Caleb’s sake if not his own. 

The moments where he could kiss Caleb or sip tea with Essek or even just wander and feel the air on his shadow-formed skin at least provided a blessed distraction from fears of whatever the future might bring. 

As it turned out, the future still contained more than its fair share of dangers for the Mighty Nein and Caleb especially, and Molly wasn’t always spared from seeing them. 

Caleb was halfway through the incantation when the Scourger cut him down, seeming to materialize out of the shadows, unseen by the other members of the Nein in the chaos of the battle. He fell heavily to the floor, limp and motionless, the chunk of obsidian falling from his nerveless fingers. 

The energy of the incomplete spell should have flickered out into nothing. Instead - thanks in no small part to his own clandestine efforts - Molly found himself caught halfway into reality and half stuck outside it. He was little more than a ghost, invisible and intangible, capable of seeing the horrors unfolding before him but helpless to intervene and _help_.

The battle started to come to a swift end after that - the Scourger who had incapacitated Caleb was quick to take him hostage and use his life as leverage to try and keep the rest of the Nein back, to force a surrender. With three more of their foes still on their feet besides the hostage taking bastard, even the clerics were unsure about getting a spell off in time. Fjord was out of magic. Nott had two sets of eyes right on her. 

If only Molly were _there_ , if only he could _do something!_

He heard himself starting to speak, so focused and intent that it didn’t even sink in until much, much later that he _was_ hearing himself, for the first time in so long and possibly ever. What mattered then was that the words were all he had - half-formed incantations he’d crafted with Essek or read over Caleb’s shoulder, dredged up from memories of another life that he would not hesitate to make use of in order to preserve this one. Mixed in to the gaps were prayers to the Moonweaver, prayers for guidance and salvation, to show him a way to turn these binding shadows into a way to set him free.

He focused with all he had. He focused so hard that he rediscovered what it felt like to _hurt_ \- fists clenched, tail lashing, caught in between and straining to get out.

And as the Scourger drew Caleb’s head back, as a knife flashed and he heard the Nein shouting, it all culminated in one long, desperate scream of Caleb’s name. 

For however long he had to live, Mollymauk Tealeaf would remember the threads of reality snapping and tearing around him as he forced his way back into existence, swords out and ablaze with a deep black light.

And when he appeared, he was already running. 

The Scourger made the mistake of hesitating at the sound of racing footsteps from behind him that definitely hadn’t been there before.

It was the last mistake he would ever made. Molly reared up and swung a scimitar and maybe it was rage or simply a part of what he was now, but one swing was all he needed to take the man’s head off his shoulders and send his lifeless body tumbling to the ground beside Caleb’s unconscious one. 

For a long second, he was piercingly aware of everyone in the vicinity gaping openly at him.

But the Mighty Nein, for all their eccentricities, were not stupid. They recovered their wits first.

The fight didn’t last much longer after that.

Of course, once the dust settled there were a lot of things that needed to be seen to. Caleb had to be stabilized and woken up. Molly’s presence had to be addressed. Caduceus took care of the former task. Jester saw to the latter.

“Molly, hi!” she was babbling, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet as she spoke. “How are you here? I thought only Caleb could make you be here! And Caleb’s still over there passed out!”

“ _Are_ you really here?” Yasha asked quietly. The sound of her voice made him flinch, made his phantom heart ache with longing. “I—” He looked over to see her fiddling with her braids, staring at him with wary, wounded, _hopeful_ eyes. “—I don’t know if that’s a rude question to ask. But it’s one that has been weighing on me. Since…the last time.”

He looked to her and she looked to him and Moonweaver in all her grace and glory, but Molly had missed her. He’d understood why Caleb had wanted to keep his strange, half-formed existence, to spare his friends - his _family_ \- any further grief. But the cat was out of the bag, and he’d missed her so much, so there seemed nothing for it but to go to her and throw his arms around her. 

Then he felt her arms come around him in turn, and Molly realized with a jolt that he could still cry.

“I’d like to think so,” he said, and this time he did register the sound of his own voice, enough that it made him flinch in surprise right along with her. He sounded different, but not much. His voice sounded a little distant, somewhat faraway even to his own ears, even echoing softly. 

Still, it wasn’t so bad. It was still fundamentally his voice, and that was what mattered. 

So he lifted his head to look at her through teary eyes and smile. His heart skipped a beat to see her smiling back and tearing up as well. He knew he didn’t look the same - no longer as vibrant, still painted in shades of shadow and dark even if he’d somehow managed to force himself tangible all on his own.

But one look at Yasha told Molly that that was enough for her. And, as he felt the rest of the Mighty Nein crowd in close around him, Molly realized that the differences didn’t matter to them either. The chance to hug one another close and talk over one another in a clamor of voices desperate to say hello, to welcome back, to catch up, that was what mattered.

Eventually, of course, everyone remembered themselves enough to let Caduceus help a pale and shaken Caleb limp closer to Molly so he could have his turn to properly welcome Molly back.

He did so with a kiss, bold and desperate and heated, and that was just another cat out of the bag, wasn’t it?

* * *

Of course, there were some practical matters to consider. They had to get out of the cave where they’d been lured into the ambush in the first place. Some of them were still moving a little slow from the aftereffects of the fight. Caleb was still especially shaky, and Molly still wasn’t actually that strong, so Jester and Yasha traded off carrying the wizard until they’d gone as far as they could into the woods for the night, until together they agreed on a safe place for Caleb to set up the dome. 

By the time they all set up camp for the night, it was almost as if Molly had never died at all.

Almost.

Nott was probably the first one to notice Caleb’s reluctance to go to sleep, but Molly was the first to act on it. He drifted closer and sat down beside his lover, leaning close and covering one of Caleb’s hands with his, kissing his cheek in front of everyone now that he was finally, finally free to do so.

“Hey,” he murmured. “Time for you to get some rest. I’ll still be here in the morning.”

This close, he saw Caleb worry at his lower lip for a moment, glancing at Molly sidelong. Then, still moving a little cautiously, he leaned in close enough to rest his head on Molly’s shoulder. Molly felt Caleb’s grip on his hand tighten fiercely for a moment, and returned it the best he could.

“Are you certain?” Caleb asked quietly.

Molly pressed another kiss to the top of his head. “‘Course,” he lied. And then: “I promise, dearest.”

In the end, it turned out to be not much of a lie at all. They bedded down for the night, and when a new day dawn, Molly opened his eyes to greet it with his love by his side and his family all around him. 


End file.
